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When I wrote Worldfarm One, I expected parts of it would be controversial. I was writing about a time in the not-so-far future when the United States was no longer the superpower it once was; and its population was emigrating to other lands for better lives and jobs, only to be looked down upon by the nations they emigrated to. It should not only sound familiar, but it should set off whatever irony alarms the reader has at their disposal. I expected that some people—well, let’s be clear, U.S. citizens—would not be thrilled with the demotion of the United States on the world stage, and that I’d hear about it fairly quickly.

But owing to the incredible vagaries of life, what I got was almost completely different. And it boggles my mind, to this day. Continue reading

When I originally wrote Worldfarm One—the story of a man from the United States who travels to Brazil to work, and learns the hard way how hard immigration can be—I expected there to be comments about the characters, about the sexuality and sex-role-reversals, the casting-couch business practices, the feed-the-world model, the prejudice, even my descriptions of Manaus and the surrounding Amazonian regions in the book.

I was surprised, therefore, to discover the greatest number of comments generated by the book were about the idea that the United States would, in the future, lose its status of “greatest nation of the world,” and because of economic hardships, American citizens would be forced to immigrate to other countries with greater opportunities to make a living. Continue reading